


The Pull

by ergo_existence



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bones Puts Up With These Dramatic Fools, M/M, started as a fic in chat, then taken and polished and loved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 15:45:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8062240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ergo_existence/pseuds/ergo_existence
Summary: Bones tries to get by, because he leads an exceedingly simple life. For instance, he works as Chief Medical Officer aboard the USS Enterprise, the ship with the highest rate of what is colloquially called Dangerous Encounters. His First Officer and Captain are probably the best equipped to deal with these statistics. Mainly the First Officer, from a purely numerical perspective.Most of the time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> you may know me best for lavernius tucker/agent washington
> 
> now i bring you: The Shit I Wrote Up in Half An Hour With Nath (ashaliks.tumblr.com for her fic rec; vialacteas.tumblr.com for main). EDIT: she says she was just eating popcorn watching me have a fit as i sent this fic bit by bit. thanks anyway.
> 
> PS i have a longfic i am going to publish soon! it's at 42k at the moment! (this is for spock/kirk). so i'm just prematurely ruining my reputation!

"What are you doing here," intones Bones, longsuffering.

 

"Merely a routine inspection, doctor."

Bones looks up from his PADD, where he's hanging out-slash-hiding in the supply room. It's not a break, as such, as he's not on shift but he's helping out.

 

"Sure," he replies, "sure. You have your look around."

 

Spock stays rooted to the spot beside Bones, where he's now begun meticulously doing very important things, like randomly going through the cabinet, so he doesn't have to look at Spock.

 

For instance, he finds a thimble. He doesn't know anybody who actually sews on-board the _Enterprise_ , let alone in his medbay.

 

Spock's stare is boring into Bones. Bones does not care. Bones is not a therapist. Bones is a man made of flesh, as well as his namesake.

 

"Doctor," tries Spock, and Bones? Bones does not care.

 

Then he hears stomping down the corridor, after the slick close of the turbolift. It’s foreboding.

 

"Hey, Bones," croons his least favourite captain in the 'fleet, ever. "Oh," Jim says, flatly. "What are you doing here?"

 

"I’m here 'cause I work here," Bones says. He lets his drawl hang thickly. He is sick to fucking death of his life.

 

"I don't mean you."

 

"Sure," Bones says. He could be placating but he literally, just as a reminder, does not fucking care.

There is a shoe in where he is trying to look busy. He does not know, either, how a shoe got in there, and how it's in amongst glass jars. Alas, this is his burden as Chief Medical Officer.

 

He can feel, not see, Spock and Jim having a stare-off.

 

Then there's an extended sigh from behind him, and that's definitely Jim. A shorter, more exasperated exhale escapes Spock.

 

Jim coughs.

 

Bones is going to throw something, possibly.

 

He sneaks a glance at Spock to realise what the lull was in their nonverbal conversation; Spock's doing _the eyebrow_ , and this one is as raised as far as it can go.

 

With haste he returns back to...whatever it is the fuck he's doing. Maybe he could look for a scalpel.

 

Jim cracks his back.

 

Spock, finally, breaks his gaze—Bones knows, again, that this is a stare-off.

 

Spock has lost.

 

"Do you," Bones says, used to how long and slowly these things take, "want to tell me what you two are up to now?" He would have put 'fools' in there, as well, because goading the two of them tends to end up with them taking sides against Bones. That usually means the end of this.

 

But he did not.

 

" _Nothing_ ," Jim says. "Just, a, you know. Inspection. We’re off shift, anyway, before you ask."

 

"Wasn’t gunna," mutters Bones.

 

Inspection, his ass.

 

A moment passes with the grace of Bones on the dancefloor. He's run out of things to keep searching through, so he diverts his attention to the next supply closet.

 

In turn, they follow him, keeping the same distance as before. It’s like a dramatic orbit of royally pissed off planets with confusing communication skills.

 

That is, if planets could communicate. Bones, the doctor he is, still recognises planets can't talk.

 

It's a metaphor.

 

"Bones," Jim says.

 

"What."

 

"Why are you going through the supply closets?"

 

Bones understands this is a ploy to make him turn around. The captain does not win.

 

"I believe it is because he does, indeed, have work to do," Spock interjects, then adds with what basically sounds like the Vulcan equivalent of sass, "captain."

 

"Nobody asked you," Jim says, all of five years old, the youngest captain in Starfleet.

 

Bones turns around to stare at Spock, properly. He’s halfway to losing by giving Jim attention. Spock looks unbearably smug for what, again, were he not Vulcan and offended by the implication, was a totally sick burn.

 

It was not a totally sick burn. Bones does not understand why Spock thinks he's so cool, even with all his xenostudy.

 

All that experience is in want of an explanation. Yet.

 

"I have work I do," Jim says.

 

It is pitiful. Bones recognises this is not what the disagreement was about.

 

They graduate from nonverbal conversation to a conversation that is actually not about what they're supposed to discuss.

 

Bones doesn't really get it.

 

But then, they are most likely—with their combined efforts—the two most difficult people in Starfleet. Bones says this with love.

 

"You two are the most goddamned difficult in Starfleet," Bones says, without love.

 

"I am not difficult," objects Spock.

 

"I mean," Jim says, "you kind of are. But I’m not."

 

"Please show me where I have been 'difficult'. I have at least six recorded scenarios where you have fit the descriptor 'difficult'. One of these aforementioned includes our first meeting."

 

"Don’t bring up the academic hearing. That’s cheating."

 

"You shall find," Spock says, and he has that cat-got-the-canary look, "it was you who was cheating."

 

There is no grave to dig in space, but Bones will try his best.

 

"Why are you here," Bones asks, flat enough to not be a question. It’s a general statement on their existence, really. The existential question of Spock-and-Jim.

 

Of course, Bones sort of knows by now. It’s the third time they've done this.

 

Spock seems to think Bones will play mediator, because that's like, what human friends do. Jim thinks the same, but for different reasons, for instance: his total lack of ability to understand his own species.

 

Or rather, just Bones.

 

Spock does _the eyebrow_ at Jim like it was Jim who came down first.

 

"Just wandering," Jim says. "Ship business."

 

Which, when translated, means: "I left the conversation angrily after our lovers' spat, and Spock came down here, I knew he came down here, so here I am, and it's like, we work together? And pretend we're not in love and stuff, and you'll like, make it better with doctor-ly guidance."

 

The last of such, Bones has none, except a heavy drink and evasive manoeuvres.

 

"Okay. Ship business," plays along Bones, who's now given up and is staring at Jim instead. "Tell me about the ship, Jim."

 

Jim bites his bottom lip. He switches his gaze from Spock to Bones. "She’s running great." it's totally ineffectual. The air hangs, stilted. Bones is going to have an aneurysm. Why can't they pick Nyota for this?

 

No, it's him, isn't it—just _typical._

Jim sighs and crosses his arms. He’s staring at Spock again.

 

"Captain," is all Spock says. Jim sighs again.

 

There's _the eyebrow_ , and it's less questioning and more "will you listen to me," but nonverbally.

 

Bones thinks they're close to the end now.

 

"FINE," Jim says, and it's essentially with capital letters. Holding out his hand, Spock gestures back to the turbolift down the hall.

 

Then they walk off, command gold and sciences blue, strutting down the hallway. Bones, he should note, doesn't actually know what the discussion was about; he probably, most likely, won't ever will.

 

But that's just typical fucking Jim and Spock, and he loses a year off his life every time they come into his territory like this.

 

Of course, what they won't realise is, they sorted everything out themselves. So he hears from his colleagues, that's basically what relationship counsellors are supposed to do.

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading. xoxoxoxox i am sorry.  
> you can find me, for star trek, on 1nacelle.tumblr.com and on twitter for the same user (^:


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